


Time is not on our side

by thevaliantdust



Series: Meanwhile in Whitestone [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: (if you squint), Angst, F/M, Fluff, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-15
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-07-24 04:47:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7494381
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thevaliantdust/pseuds/thevaliantdust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 4 & 5: Fluff and Angst</p>
<p>Pike/Percy</p>
<p>Pike's divine connection ends, and the waiting begins. <br/>Set after ep 59 (sort of works with ep 60)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time is not on our side

**Author's Note:**

> Because we all know I can't write anything 100% fluffy to save my life, I had to combine day 4&5\. Oops.

She fizzles out some time on that first day in Syngorn. She can feel her astral image fading, but they are all sitting around talking and laughing, it doesn't seem worth it to dampen the mood. Especially when they’re trying so hard to keep the twins’ minds off the judgement that invariably waits outside of the small guest room they have cloistered themselves in.

So she sits and smiles and laughs as her divine form dims bit by bit. She just manages to catch Percy’s eye as her connection to her friends blinks out. She sees his moment of understanding, his acknowledgement of her silent goodbye, his tiny nod of thanks that makes her chest ache in unexpected ways. 

And then she is back in her body with a different kind of ache. Her legs are crossed beneath her, somewhere between searing pain and numbness. Her back is so tense it feels bruised. 

“Allie! She’s back!”

There is a familiar voice beside her, calling out, and then footsteps.

Pike forces her eyes open, trying to battle through her body’s sluggishness. She feels more than sees Allura kneel before her, arcane energy pushing the ache out of her limbs. 

“What’s going on?” She asks, or at least she tries to. Her voice is croaky and hoarse.

Her vision clears just in time to see Kima and Allura share a look, but it’s a voice from the doorway that answers her question.

“You’ve been gone for days,” Cassandra informs her, moving into the room to lean against the back wall, arms folded. 

Before she can ask what exactly Cassandra means, Allura finally speaks up. “Did you follow them into the Feywild?” she asks, no small wrinkle of concern to her brow. Pike nods slowly, and Allura shakes her head.

“That’s so dangerous!” she says, almost crossly. “With the time distortion, who knows how long you could have left your body, the connection was getting weak as it is, you’re lucky you came back when you did-” Kima puts a hand on Allura’s arm, stilling her.

“Time distortion?” Pike cuts in finally, shifting her gaze from one set of concerned eyes to another, looking for answers she hasn’t yet given time to to be spoken.

Allura’s face softens at Pike’s obvious confusion. “How long were you in the Feywild?” she asks gently, a slight knowing tone in her voice alluding to the fact that this is not the entirety of her statement.

Pike’s brow furrows. “Two days?” she says, sure of her answer but already sensing something amiss. She catches on at the last second. “How long has it been here?”

“A week and a half.”

Reeling, Pike sits back on her knees. 

“But… but that means- they could be gone for weeks! Months!” her voice rises in both volume and pitch in her distress. Kima’s jaw clenches with a nod, and in the background Cassandra squeezes her eyes shut tightly in acknowledgement. 

Pike can’t think. If she’d known… She would have said a proper goodbye. No scratch that, she would have gone with them in the first place. And suddenly, before her brain has quite caught up with her emotions, she is pushing herself into a standing position. Or at least trying to. Her legs don’t want to hold her weight. Piercing needles cover her stiff limbs and her knees are jelly. Allura reaches out to steady her, or perhaps to hold her back, she’s not sure which.

“I have to go to them,” she rasps.

“You’ll do no such thing,” Allura tells her firmly. “For one thing, you need to recover your strength. Astral projection is no laughing matter at the best of times, and this was certainly not that.”

Pike tries to fight it, but even as she does she can feel the queasy emptiness of her stomach, the dryness of her throat, the way her head spins with every movement. She won’t get far like this.

“And besides that, you have no means of travel, and no idea where they are-” pre-empting Pike’s retort she cuts herself off, “by the time you get to the Feywild whole days could have passed. There are no guarantees. The last thing Vox Machina need is to lose a member because she charged foolishly after them into the Feywild on her own.”

Pike huffs and falls back down to a sitting position, her numb legs giving way. She knows Allura is right, and hates her for it just a little bit. It goes against everything she is to leave Grog, and Scanlan, the twins, Keyleth and- and Percy- to fend for themselves, knowing the dangers. Having no way to contact them. It dawns on her then that even the gatestone she carries likely won’t get her there in time to save them if they should need her. She is truly stuck here, useless.

As if reading her thoughts, Kima pipes up. “Don’t forget, you stayed here for a reason. We can’t find that backwards handed bastard without you. You focus on that, they’ll be back before you know it!”

It’s an empty promise that hangs in the air between the four ladies, but no one dares mention it. Pike feels a wave of fatigue sweep over her, and suddenly even sitting up is too much. The room sways, and she feels at least one pair of hands reach out to steady her. They lead her somewhere, to a bed it seems, and she falls into soft darkness.

**

The coming days are an agonising parade of her own self-doubt. A perpetual game of ‘what if’ plays in her head and she does a terrible job of hiding it, as more than once her companions have had to talk her down from using the gatestone right there and then.

After all, she has no real cause to think they’re in danger, other than the very nature of being in the Feywild. And if something had happened to them, she’d know. At very least, if something happened to Percy, she’d know.

Then again the necklace was mostly a mortal peril sort of thing. It didn’t do a thing when he was blinded, all of five minutes after setting foot in the Feywild. Just thinking about it brings her to her knees, unable to catch her breath. She’s a woman of action; all the waiting, the thinking, it’s killing her.

She pictures over and over again Percy’s face, eyes screwed tightly shut as he rocked in a little ball. As if he was trying to give a reason for the overwhelming darkness that became his world. And maybe it was only for a short time, but Pike remembers his terror, and her own heartbreak. Percy who watches the world with such avid curiosity, a keen observer of all things, suddenly bereft of his most prized sense. His endless possibility of creation stolen in a second. And even after his sight was restored, she remembers the way he shook, the way his eyes roamed over every inch of his surroundings, desperate to see it all.

Pike had so longed to reach out to him after that, but fear had held her back, fear of rejection, or perhaps her own inadequacies. Now a different fear takes hold. There is nothing quite so terrifying as a wasted last chance.

**

Cassandra seeks her out eventually. Pike figured she would.

“Where were they, when you last saw them?” she asks, trying for casual, but one worried soul always knows another, and Pike can see right through her. “Where was he?”

“They had just reached Syngorn,” she assures Cassandra. “They were among friends.”

And maybe ‘friends’ is a loose term, but if Pike isn’t sleeping well (or at all), the least she can do is try to make sure someone else is.

“Percy was in his element, he’s such a noble,” she tells Cassandra fondly, and they share a knowing smile. 

Cassandra gives a dry little laugh. “Yes, well, he does have rather a way with words, when he puts his mind to it,” she concedes, rubbing her eyes in a way that reminds Pike so very much of Percy. There it is again, that little ache in her chest, now a thousand times more painful with time and distance. Cassandra must pick up on the shift in mood, because worry lines appear between her brow.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” she asks, and her small, unsure voice reminds Pike just how young Lady De Rolo really is.

Taking care of people is her strong suit, but at this point Pike has used up all her platitudes. 

“We fought a dragon,” she says hollowly, “how much worse could it be?”

**

Days turn into weeks. They’ve long since found the location of Hotis’ lair in the Nine Hells. Between them, Allura, Gilmore and a few others manage to raise arcane protections around Whitestone. Kima works with the guards to train and equip more people. Pike works with Kashaw to set up an effective triage system to deal with dragon related injuries. 

Still, they wait. She waits.

Weeks turn into a month, and Gilmore finds her bawling her eyes out behind the half-constructed shrine to Sarenrae. He pulls her into his lap and lets her cry. She pretends not to notice his damp cheeks and ragged breaths.

Another week later the guards escort a group of travellers into Whitestone. Pike recognises a short gnomish figure amongst them.

“Is Dad- uh, is Scanlan here?” Kaylee asks her, seemingly pleased to spot a familiar face.

It’s all Pike can do to keep her face from crumpling in. “Not at the moment,” she manages with false cheer, before offering to show the girl around town. It doesn’t take long for Kaylee to whittle the truth out of her, though she seems markedly less perturbed.

“If Dad and his friends have done even half the stuff he brags about then a bit of a trip to the Feywild is water off a duck’s back to them,” she philosophises matter-of-factly. “Just sucks for the ones left at home.”

**

She feels it, like a punch to the gut. It wakes her in the middle of the night and leaves her gasping for air.

Something is horribly, horribly wrong.

She jumps out of bed, barefooted and badly dressed for the Whitestone night air, but that is the last thing on her mind. She runs down the hallway, cold stone under her feet. She doesn’t know what to do- there’s nothing _to do_ \- they’re too far away and she can feel him _dying_.

She has no idea where she’s going but she runs anyway. Past the temple of Pelor, the shrine of Sarenrae; past the rooms of anyone who would try to help but end up staring in horror just as helpless as she. She finds herself on her hands and knees in the cobblestoned courtyard, breathing deep, heaving, sobbing breaths. This can’t be how it ends.

There is a flash of light just beyond her, and as she lifts her head it blinds her for a second, but in that second she hears voices.

“Pike! Help!” 

“Someone, get Pike!”

“Please, help!”

The light clears, and there they are, all of them. Bloody and screaming, but alive. All but one.

Limp in Grog’s massive arms, glasses askew in a way he would hate in life, lies Percy, and it breaks her.

Getting up so fast she skins her knees without noticing, she scrambles over to him. The mix of relief and anguish in her friend’s voices as they see her fades into the background. All that matters is Percy, and the fact that this cannot- will not- be his last day. Not when she has so much left unsaid.

Her fingers wrap around his wrist, fumbling for a pulse, even as her other hand splays across his chest seeking a heartbeat. Her knees nearly give way when she finds both. 

Weak, barely clinging on, but he’s alive. Praise Sarenrae. 

Without another thought she draws every ounce of power in her veins and beyond and pushes it into Percy’s spent form. She feels more than sees him come alive under her touch, as blackness creeps into the corners of her vision, and she sways on the spot.

Strong hands catch her, steady her, and she feels herself held firm against the body of another. 

“Perhaps a touch vigourous with the healing.”

Irritatingly proper but very much alive. She’ll take it.

She opens her eyes again, pulling away to discover it is indeed Percy’s chest she is pressed against. She feels a blush creep across her cheeks, thankful for the low light and Percy’s awful eyesight that likely masks it entirely.

“You’re back,” she says quietly, becoming aware of other people starting to crowd around the group, likely drawn by all the yelling. She probably doesn’t have long before a justly anxious Cassandra storms over wanting some time with her brother.

“Don’t tell me you’ve missed us already,” he teases, but she sees a depth of understanding in his eyes. Of course he knows about the time distortion. Fucking asshole.

To her horror, she feels a single, humiliating tear trail down her face. She hopes she can count on the moonlight to cover this one too, but no such luck. His brow furrows and he reaches over to wipe it away. 

“How long?” he whispers, genuine worry on his face.

“Fifty-two days,” she chokes out, watching him process it like a physical blow to his chest. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“A week,” he says, almost pleading, “it was only a week.”

“I know.” She leans forward, suddenly so tired. He pulls her back to rest on his chest again. “But you’re back,” she says in a whisper, “you’re back.”

It’s a mantra she repeats, and he joins in, “We’re back, we’re back,” until something in her tone must give it away, because he adds, “I’m back.”

She looks up suddenly, meeting his gaze with wide eyes. She opens her mouth to ask a question- she’s not even sure what she’d say- but then Vax is there, and Keyleth, clapping her on the back with big ‘thank yous’ and Grog picks her up with a ‘buddy!’ and the moment has passed, and she’s with her friends again, and she buries herself in their love.

She catches his eye again only once that evening, before they all fall asleep in a big pile in one of the Whitestone rooms. It’s brief, far too brief, but they say what they need to.

There is thanks, and relief, and longing. Something unfinished. The tired promise of ‘tomorrow’. For now, it is enough.


End file.
